In India, the key is to start at the base and start very young. We need professionally trained talent, talent that wants to make football their career, and people must see football as a strong professional career option.
— Ronnie Screwvala
I play chess with the computer when I feel dull in my mind and after two games - ‘out or win’, I feel sharp again.
One becomes an entrepreneur to break the glass ceiling and that's when you grow the market. Of course, in that process you have to be prepared to get hurt. You will get hurt. But I'm a doer and I like taking risks.
Most of us don’t look at investment in a win-win situation. You have to give in a little bit; you have to take a little bit. Most feel everything has to be rinsed out for closing of the transaction.
In the digital era, everyone is a student. Degrees given by formal education are not a value currency anymore. Technical skills and an individual’s ability to apply the outcomes are important, irrespective of age.
But I'm a first-generation entrepreneur. I realised very soon that I was a do-er, outside of being maybe a value adder, mentor or someone who just gives inputs.
The way we structure our deals is to work closely with the director. It is imperative to work with a studio because the way the film is marketed is crucial.
After college I’d take up a job and I’d experience what it is to take up a job, rather than starting out on my own. I said let me just work for six months so that I know myself a little better.
The next level of mass consumption - and India is known for its consumption story - is really going to come from consumption in the rural areas. So that’s going to throw up a lot of unique opportunities.
When one was looking at getting out of media, I took a fair amount of time to figure out what I want to do for the next 20 years… the one thing I am very passionate about is entrepreneurship in this country.
Parsee culture is definitely one of strong business acumen, high ethics, and an element of philanthropy.
I would be fooling myself if I thought I would succeed as an entrepreneur. Maybe my base as a theatre artiste gave me the confidence as that’s when you start feeling you can do something on your own.
The consumer has paid a ticket price to watch a movie and he/she is being subjected to a massive 15 minutes or more of advertising thereby driving him/her away from coming to the theatre. This has to stop.
In a country like India, we need to solve problems at scale.
I'm off the diet, but not the treadmill. I speak as someone who's attempted to lose weight and get fit thrice before in my life.
Theatre has been a sort of hobby. I regret that I am not active, but given my job that is difficult. But those were learning days. The learning curve was the level of confidence, maturity, and reflexes that theatre teaches you is fantastic. You are alone in front of an audience for two hours and that gives you a different kind of confidence.
UTV's uniqueness is that it is an integrated media company.
I am a firm believer of staying the course, you can never time success or being in the right place at the right time. But you can sure work on creating multiple opportunities for the same.
Without appearing smug in any way, I would say I did not have a role model. I wish I had but I did not.
Somebody needs to position you and introduce you, but after that, most of the bankers get represented with their large clients; mostly investors are their long-term clients and an investee is a short term client.
I have never had a situation where an investee company would have a good value by having a banker. Investment bankers are there to please future clients. You are a temporary client; they are therefore not to get you the best valuation.
India’s ambitions as a country and, in turn, the ambitions of our youth and working professionals are soaring. A new wave of learning is upon us.
How Hungama became the top children’s channel in India is interesting because we were up against, not just Disney, but also Time Warner’s Cartoon Network. It was an illustration of the fact that for any company that wants to grow in emerging markets, localizing content is the key.
The film business is just one of our verticals. We have wanted for some time to make inroads into the English language market, because I think that over time such films can cross over into the international market.
If you’re looking at a country like India, the basic subsistence in itself creates its own challenges. So I think that lends to a different level of innovation and a different level of entrepreneurship.
The interesting part for India is really that it’s an emerging market, and therefore the opportunities are very unique. I guess the challenge that comes with that - it’s always a path less trodden.
When I set up UTV, my ambitions were quite low.
Multiplexes need to be partners in increasing footfalls, but they have been too focused - maybe rightly so - in expanding their footprint of screens, because we are such an under-screened country.
A three-to-six month course can give priority and direction on the five or six important things that entrepreneurs need to do first.
I have learnt as an entrepreneur that the formidable opponent you can have is someone who has nothing to lose.
After 2012, I’m pretty much out of the media and entertainment business. But yes, I was the outsider and no, it wasn’t a handicap. To me, it was a blessing in disguise.
A good beginning is like a honeymoon; it gets over soon. The challenge is in keeping up the momentum.
A lot of good movies produced well can be distributed or marketed badly. Of course, a lot of bad movies marketed well can also fail badly. But we want to be in charge of the value chain. And for this we have to be in software production, distribution, and broadcasting.
When we started our foundation, I was less than 30 years old. We pledged that 10 per cent of our profits, whatever the amount, would be used for a social cause, and that we would be actively involved in that cause.
I do believe that it’s when you stop and give up that real failure takes place.
I chose to invest everything in my own private companies.
Somebody is coming to bring their global vision to India. If they are coming on their own, they shouldn’t tie up. If they are coming because you know the ground level and there are international best practices to be shared, then it is the best way.
Unlearning is gaining importance as workplaces are moving towards agile, collaborative working models. While conventional education adds to our knowledge, unlearning will become the new learning in the coming decade, as concepts and ideas keep evolving.
The global e-learning online market is on fire. Organizations which feel left out of this non-linear world of opportunities are seeing the need to adopt this new way of lifelong learning.
Disney is looking at growing in emerging markets - and for them India is an important market. They also recognize how important it is to partner with a local Indian company.
I would say that in the 1990s, I don’t think the environment was enough to make anyone ambitious and aspirational. It was a downer, I would think.
India is not going to come up with the best and most modern car, but if you want the most economic car in the world, we’re pioneering that with the Nano, which the Tata Group did in India, for example. And I would call that innovation of the highest degree.
For an emerging market that hopes to be the third largest economy in the world, you cannot do it without being innovative and disruptive. There is no choice in the matter.
My parents used to play cards on Saturday… all the friends would come across. So it was like one massive Parsee gathering… and the value system kind of creeps in.
My thought process was: We had decided to become a B2C company and build the UTV brand and we couldn’t be that as a TV producer or ad film-maker or doing in-flight programmes.
We are calling ourselves a startup nation, but the number of people who set out on their own is very low; even 10,000 a year would be low in a country like India. We can say we are a startup nation but the world won’t say it.
You can look at any industry and sector and then figure out how high is your glass ceiling. Do you want to diversify or do you want to penetrate the ceiling? Because the ones who break the glass ceiling are going to be big-time winners, but it will be a longer-term view on things and requires a lot more courage, a lot more guts.
We need to find a different word for ‘skills’, which to most people sounds very basic.
There is no typical day and I intend to keep it that way for the next 20 years.
If you are a single product company, then you are a contract company. But if you enter the retail market, then you have to be a multiple product company.
